c bow is op - change my mind

[The SSIKness]

the spec requires 0 arrows and is a double dmg and double stun
when using one mage item you get the regen bonus and you can literally spam c bow spec and its an aoe as well

[Rose Brigade]

Not trying to change your mind, you're free to think as you will, but Cbow doesn't do double damage, and actively does less damage for each enemy you have to fight.
You also have to be up close to use the special for it to do anything, let alone be effective, something a ranger should never be.
By the time you killed a group of 5 enemies with CBow, I will have already obliterated 7-8 with magic fire combo at a distance with the draconic staff or staff of light. Magic doesn't have fall off damage per enemy or distance like Cbow does.
Likewise while I pick off enemies 1 by 1 with Stagbow, I only need 1-2 shots per enemy, which I will also have had them killed before they reach me. and most likely before you killed all of yours.

Cbow should have been a T4 bow, or the first T5 bow.

[Wolfy6]

Originally posted by Rose Brigade:

Not trying to change your mind, you're free to think as you will, but Cbow doesn't do double damage, and actively does less damage for each enemy you have to fight.
You also have to be up close to use the special for it to do anything, let alone be effective, something a ranger should never be.
By the time you killed a group of 5 enemies with CBow, I will have already obliterated 7-8 with magic fire combo at a distance with the draconic staff or staff of light. Magic doesn't have fall off damage per enemy or distance like Cbow does.
Likewise while I pick off enemies 1 by 1 with Stagbow, I only need 1-2 shots per enemy, which I will also have had them killed before they reach me. and most likely before you killed all of yours.

Cbow should have been a T4 bow, or the first T5 bow.

Crystal bow special attack goes through walls which really is what makes it quite a powerful weapon.

[Rose Brigade]

Originally posted by Wolfy6:

Originally posted by Rose Brigade:

Not trying to change your mind, you're free to think as you will, but Cbow doesn't do double damage, and actively does less damage for each enemy you have to fight.
You also have to be up close to use the special for it to do anything, let alone be effective, something a ranger should never be.
By the time you killed a group of 5 enemies with CBow, I will have already obliterated 7-8 with magic fire combo at a distance with the draconic staff or staff of light. Magic doesn't have fall off damage per enemy or distance like Cbow does.
Likewise while I pick off enemies 1 by 1 with Stagbow, I only need 1-2 shots per enemy, which I will also have had them killed before they reach me. and most likely before you killed all of yours.

Cbow should have been a T4 bow, or the first T5 bow.

Crystal bow special attack goes through walls which really is what makes it quite a powerful weapon.

Technically fire spells do too. The attacks are explosion radius and can effect enemies through walls all the same, again with no falloff on damage per enemy.

[Agent Orange]

I did damage testing with the training dummies and the C-bow special attack killed enemies almost twice as fast as using draconic staff fire. That, and the fact that it has a pretty generous consistent aoe, staggers, and damage stays 50 on each burst per enemy, it's pretty much the best.

[Bardiche]

so I tried the cbow and thanks for the suggestion its op purely because of the fact it stun locks packs;

I had actually finished the game before realising this bow exists and I had used the t4 mace sure the mace or the staff of light, do more dmg but dmg is not as important on this game as crowd control

cbow was night and day different; you no longer need to be careful or kill things cautiously one by one, you can just run up and everything locks into place, massive quality of life change

[Rose Brigade]

Originally posted by Agent Orange:

I did damage testing with the training dummies and the C-bow special attack killed enemies almost twice as fast as using draconic staff fire. That, and the fact that it has a pretty generous consistent aoe, staggers, and damage stays 50 on each burst per enemy, it's pretty much the best.

To humor you, (and because the curiosity in me wants me to be thorough) I did a test similarly just now.

I tested against 1 training dummy, 3 training dummies, and then 5 training dummies.

Then I did a test against live enemies to be thorough. What I've concluded is..

Since my last test of the bow, the damage fall off isn't there anymore?

To be clear it wasn't the crystal explosions that had fall off damage, those are consistent 50s. The initial damage with each shot is what fell off, which seems to stay consistent now, so that's good. Maybe it was a bug or ninja rebalance.
So yes it is better now compared to when I tried it the first week of Dragonwilds being released.

But I still did more testing for thoroughness and compare it to Fire-combo as I stated previously.

What I've concluded is... Fire is still better.

C-bow has apparently been fixed so that fall off damage isn't a problem anymore, but that doesn't make up for its low damage in general. (It really should've been a T4/T5 bow)

No matter what armor is used, the damage stays the same for the special attack, and cannot be altered because it cannot hit weak points like aimed charge shots do.

Each hit is 35 damage initially (44 if crit) and 50 for each explosion (Explosions cannot crit). Each attack takes 30 stamina to unleash, making using a piece of magic armor mandatory to keep your stamina from being destroyed.
30 Stamina do do a maximum of 94 damage per enemy.

Comparing to Fire Combo Magic, I only need 40 stamina in total to cast off the full combo, 10 stamina per sequence.

First hit is 25 damage (33 on crit)
Second hit is 29 damage (36 on crit) (Every hit from this point does stagger)
Third hit is 41 damage (51 damage on crit)
Fourth attack does not do damage initially and instead rains constant damage over a period of around 7 seconds, dealing between 3 and 7 damage per tick for as long as the enemy is in that bubble of damage. The pool of damage does around a total of 14 hits per enemy, equating to a minimum of 42 damage and a maximum of 98 damage per enemy that stays entirely in the pool. (The fourth hit is also not testable on training dummies as the fire rain does not affect them, nor does burn damage)

Obviously maximum is a best case scenario, but not realistic. If we got lucky with the massive Crit boost from the Magic armor Set+ Draconic staff combo, and managed to get all Crits even on one enemy, it would be 218 damage on the enemy that took full Crit, for just 40 stamina. On a worst case scenario with 0 Crits at all, we would get 137 damage on each enemy minimum, with 1 single cast of the full combo. This is also remembering that the combo does stun-lock, almost as effectively as Cbow, if not similarly.

So already just from 1 full combo I will have already out-damaged the Cbow in around the same amount of stamina usage.
But lets remember that Fire also has the chance to cause a burn DoT which does 19 damage per second for 3 seconds, and can be re-applied mid-combo.

In my experience most of the time on most average enemies, I kill off full groups with 1 combo, but if I don't the second finished them off before I even complete it. If we be generous and just say 2 full combos to kill off 1 group of enemies, I will have only used 80 stamina in total, not even a full bar of stamina.

With Cbow, I need to do a special 4-5 times to kill off 1 group, which is betwen 120-150 stamina in total.

The main argument people like to use here is that Cbow costs no ammo to use, only stamina.
I propose a counter, that Stamina is more important than ammo. I can make thousands of runes or arrows all day, losing a few arrows or runes means nothing to me, but overspam your abilities and a loss of stamina can result in a death easily.


HOWEVER..
I will give something to Cbow that I never did notice before, as it has 1 trait that no other weapon has.. It can stunlock a berserked Thane.
Thane as most people know by now cannot be staggered/stunned by any weapon or ability once the shield comes down. HOWEVER. This apparently doesn't account for the crystal explosions, as each crystal explosion does actually stun Thane.

So in final conclusion.

You are still better off using Fire combo for mass damage and stunlocking groups of enemies. However if your enemy group consists of a Thane, you can use Cbow to ensure safer kills as you keep the Thane at bay.
The reason fire still takes the gold is because it can do everything Cbow can do at a much longer range, and with more damage (and honestly more coolness and flair with that massive hell-rain). I may not can stun a Thane with it, but that's a niche that doesn't arise as often in the first place unless I'm actively hunting in the Stormtouched Highlands, or just get unlucky with a hunting party/warband.

Would I say Cbow is OP? No.
But I will say it is absolutely better than Week 1, and glad they fixed it. It might actually be enough for me to pull it back out of the display cabinet just in case I need to fight a group with a Thane in it.


Edit:
I want to add a note here.
Do not use Fire just because I say it's better. This is a video game, always prioritize fun and personal preference. If CBow works for you and you love it, then use it. I even said this before I knew the Cbow was fixed.
I use fire because it's fun for me, and I love magic and the fire rain. Never play based on meta, it will only make you sad.

[Agent Orange]

Originally posted by Rose Brigade:

snip

Hey, you seem to use magic pretty often. Do you know what causes the fire dot to proc? I couldn't find any information on it anywhere, and at first I thought it might be related to crit, but I didn't notice any difference with full mage set (+!5%) and draconic staff (15%) on fire spells.

[Rose Brigade]

Originally posted by Agent Orange:

Originally posted by Rose Brigade:

snip

Hey, you seem to use magic pretty often. Do you know what causes the fire dot to proc? I couldn't find any information on it anywhere, and at first I thought it might be related to crit, but I didn't notice any difference with full mage set (+!5%) and draconic staff (15%) on fire spells.

I think it might be RNG actually if not a hidden build up meter.
That was a side test I tried, but I couldn't really get consistent results.

I tried hitting enemies with just attacks and counting how many times. The Secondary for Fire as well as the 4th attack in the combo both seem to have a higher chance of setting it off.
But I've seen it set off on first hit of the combo too, and it seems to be inconsistent. I got it to set off first try before, but then didn't get it for another like 3 hits.
I wanna go with RNG more than anything.

[The SSIKness]

i love fire but cbow stagger is just to nice for me